Egypt: Mumdance's Mahraganat Mixtape

Electro Chaabi, aka Mahraganat, is the sound of young Egypt and is the single most exciting new music currently coming out of the working class suburbs of cities such as Cairo and Alexandria. There is a popular misconception that this music is the sound of the 2011 and 2013 Tahrir Square revolutions, but its lyrical concerns are mainly social and recreational rather than political. However, in the same way that growing access to social media helped youth groups to organise after 2008, adding to the effort which ultimately overthrew Hosni Mubarak; a lot of musicians took advantage of newly available internet access to get their hands on cracked copies of Acid Pro, FruityLoops and Auto-Tune helping to crystalize the Electro Chaabi sound. It is perhaps more the case that these political and musical revolutions happened at the same time, along parallel lines. In the loosest possible terms, this music exists in the same continuum as the post war folk pop known as Shaabi which reached its peak of popularity in the 1970s but this current reboot features fierce beats and production styles which are roughly analogous with those heard in grime and dancehall (Aesthetically, the Cairene and Alexandrian MCs are obsessed with such stoner poster boys as Tupac, Snoop, Shaggy and Bob Marley). Given the amount that young MCs such as Sadat and keyboard players such as Islam Chipsy share with young dubstep and grime producers in the UK (in musical outlook at least), it’s really thrilling to see Cairo Calling, a British Council and Rinse FM project, bring these cultures temporarily together in both Britain and Egypt. While the away trip to London led to an exciting Boiler Room session, the home leg in Cairo produced this excellent mixtape put together by Mumdance for Dummy Magazine. I’m not sure what my favourite bit of this thirty minute mix is, whether it’s Diesel from El Salam City producing a cheeky mahraganat remix of Wiley’s Eskimo, the superlative inducing Sadat and Alaa Fifty Cent spitting rhymes on Cairo 8 Bar or the Keyboard King Of Cairo, Islam Chipsy slamming up against the aqueous dubstep of Pinch… whichever it is, I can’t stop playing this great mix tape. Awesome work by everyone involved.

Iran: Siavash Amini - Til Human Voices Wake Us

Iranian ambient noise artist Siavash Amini is already well known in his own country's avant garde music circles, but this album, Til Human Voices Wake Us - ten tracks based on the poetry of T.S. Eliot - is his first international release. The project has been difficult to execute for a lot of reasons according to Daniel Castrejón of Umor Rex, a cassette label run out of Mexico City who released the album (with the help of Thrill Jockey) as a modest run of 80 tapes. He said: “[In Iran] they don't have many services to upload files, and the internet is very slow, [so] when he sent me the final files to make the master, it took, like, 24 hours to upload.” But the biggest problem so far has been getting copies of the album back to Amini himself. Due to the economic blockade impacting on cultural issues, not a single copy of the album has made it back to the artist, despite Castrejón trying shipping firms in both Austria and America. The quest to get him a copy of his own album continues. Should you want to purchase it yourself however, the task should prove a lot less complex.

Niger: Koudede - Ewellan

In the world of Tuareg Desert Blues or Ishumar Guitar there’s always a lot of activity going on. Recently Tinariwen have regained their form with new album Emmaar, their talent still undimmed by the patronage of Bono and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In Agadez, Niger, the amazing Sahel Sounds Blog have been involved in a very unique kickstarter project: to shoot an homage to the Prince film Purple Rain, starring Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar. Filming on the world’s first Tuareg language fiction film Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (which translates as Rain the Color of Blue with a little Red in it) has wrapped so hopefully there will be more news soon. Sadly the Tamashek community lost Koudede, one of its leading musicians and brightest lights, in October 2012 after he died in a car crash. Three of the recordings on the Guitars From Agadez Vol. 7 EP, out now on Sublime Frequencies, were recorded live at Toumast, the Tuareg HQ in Bamako, Mali in February of the same year, at the height of the recent armed conflict. His style is much rawer and urgent than the face-scrubbed recordings of Tinariwen and Tamikrest and arguably transmits the emotional intensity of the Tuareg message much more clearly. (Thanks to compiler Hisham Mayet and everyone at Sublime Frequencies for sorting the Soundcloud out for this playlist.)

Saudi Arabia: Al Namrood - Estahalat Al Harb

Isolation, dislocation from the prevailing social and political orthodoxies, introspection, a genuine connection with ancient spiritual/religious beliefs and a belief in the sublime potential of art to represent nature are often hallmarks of great black metal. And this is why Al Namrood from Saudi Arabia are undoubtedly much more in tune with the genuine spirit of Black Metal than some dudes called Portcullis who wear corpse-paint and live on a farm in the American Midwest. The press can look patronisingly at BM bands in places like the Middle East as being exotic or even funny, when, in some respects, they should be seen as the true heirs to the Scandinavians of two decades ago. The three piece - who have to keep their exact location and identities strictly secret - are so far removed from normal Saudi society that there simply is no Western equivalent to what they are doing. They have never played live in front of an audience and have to record clandestinely. They even have to smuggle their instruments out to the US for repair via a clandestine drop off spot in Bahrain when they break. If they are ever discovered they risk execution by stoning or beheading for apostasy: something that is all too imaginable given their sceptical stance on modern religion. Despite all this though, Al Namrood - who are named after the Qur’an equivalent to the Old Testament rebel king and unbeliever, Nimrod, builder of the Tower Of Babel - inject a palpable amount of verve and swagger into what they do. New frontman Mudamer’s vocals are unusual for Black Metal; it’s relatively rare to hear any necro singer enunciating their lyrics with such punkish, almost theatrical relish, and that’s no matter what the language. But the band really come into their own musically, hence the inclusion of this instrumental track from their recent album, Heen Yadhar Al Ghasq. The excitement the music creates is in part caused by a conflict in the instrumentation; not just because of the tonal clash between electric guitars and Eastern instruments such as oud, ney, qanun and darbuka but because the latter have traditional Middle Eastern tunings and the former are tuned to a standard (Western) scale. The microtonal intervals the maqam calls for are achieved by note bending, meaning the threat of dissonance is always present despite never quite arriving. Also Al Namrood are clearly good musicians but everything they record is self-produced under stressful conditions in unsuitable home surroundings on substandard equipment. This means albums such as Heen Yadhar Al Ghasq have the musicianship of early Melechesh but are recorded with the lo-fi, everything in the red, distortion of an album like Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger. All of these things combine to create a truly unique sound that really couldn’t come from any other region in the world.

20.sv - the threshold measurement for radiation poisoning beyond which human death is always inevitable within seven days - is the cross genre harsh frequency project of Lebanese musician Osman Arabis. As he describes it: “[this] sonic extermination device... was activated in the year 2000 with the sole purpose of simulating the demise of the human race through sound. A project that restricts Itself to no boundaries, definition, sound, ideologies or rules as It breathes in Its very own viral hive independently defying all sound and music standards.” You can check out excerpts from his new album The Great Sonic Wave on Soundcloud which feature guest vocals from ol’ burst larynx himself, Alan Dubin of Khanate and Gnaw but if you want to experience the full unedited and sublime terror of 20.sv, check out Digital War above, his previous album, released in November 2013 via Bandcamp. (Thanks to Stephen O’Malley for this recommendation.)

<a href="http://osmanarabi.bandcamp.com/album/digital-war">Digital War by 20.SV</a>